Man claiming age bias to get day in court

A federal appeals court has reinstated the age-discrimination lawsuit filed by the fired employee of a company that sells food processing and packing equipment.

In an unsigned opinion, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that James Savina presented evidence to support his claim that Robert Reiser & Co. was guilty of age discrimination.

The judges said that evidence was sufficient to suggest that arguments by company officials that they did not fire him because of his age might not be entirely accurate.

The decision does not mean that Savina wins his case. All it does is give him a chance to have his day in court, an opportunity that a trial judge refused.

Court records say Savina was hired in 1996 at age 48 as a sales associate. His territory at the time he was let go included Arizona, Utah and Colorado.

He made sufficient sales each year until 2005, when his wife fell ill. The result is that Savina, who had set a public goal of $1.4 million in sales, logged just $877,967 that year.

His regional manager asked a sales manager to travel with Savina. That sales manager said that in the time he was with Savina - nine weeks over seven months - Savina was not following up on new leads, maximizing sales with existing customers or learning about new equipment.

The regional manager fired Savina in April 2006 when he was 58, replacing him with someone who was 41 with less sales experience. That occurred despite the fact that Savina had reached about $1.3 million in sales for the 10 months before he was fired.

He sued, claiming age discrimination.

U.S. District Court Judge Frederick Martone said federal law makes it illegal to fire an employee who is older than 40 if that person is performing the job satisfactorily and is replaced by a "substantially younger employee with inferior qualifications."

Once a worker shows that, the burden then is on the company to assert a "legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason" for the firing. At that point, the fired worker can present evidence showing that the claim by the company was not valid and the real reason is age discrimination.

In this case, Martone said affidavits from customers saying they were satisfied with Savina's performance are meaningless because they don't address the company's underlying concerns with his performance. And he said that the increase in sales before he was fired does not address company claims he was not responsible for all of them and that the full potential of the territory was unrealized.

Martone also said that while most of the people the company fired were over 40, and some over 50, it ignores the fact that many were over 40 when they were hired in the first place.

But the appellate court said Martone was too quick to throw out the case, saying Savina did provide a response to the company's claims.

"Savina relies not only on his own detailed testimony, but also on the declarations of several former customers and a former co-worker," the appellate court concluded. That, the judges said, shows there are "genuine disputes of fact" about the legitimacy of his dismissal - disputes that should be resolved at a trial.